Asked about its response to China's diplomatic note, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry told Radio Slovenija on Sunday that it was still waiting for answers from the Interior Ministry and the state prosecution, based on which it would form its response.
January 21, 2018
China has called on Slovenia to hand over the Taiwanese suspects detained in Thursday's operation against illegal call centres, the Chinese Embassy in Ljubljana told the STA, as reported January 21, 2018
Slovenian police apprehended nine persons on Thursday, six of whom have been kept in detention, including two Slovenians and four Asians. The police also identified 32 Asian victims of human trafficking.
The Chinese Embassy now argues that they are not victims of illegal trafficking or illegal immigrants, but that they are criminals and that Slovenia should surrender them to China.
In a written response to queries from the STA [in Slovenian], the embassy said that the arrests were the product of close cooperation between the Chinese and Slovenian police.
The cooperation is linked to a visit by Chinese special envoy Meng Jianzhu in Slovenia in September last year when he also met Prime Minister Miro Cerar and Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec.
At the time the two countries agreed on a joint fight against telephone scams hurting Chinese citizens, and the visit signalled the start of close cooperation between the two police forces, reads the release.
According to the embassy, it was based on information obtained from the Chinese police that the Slovenian police conducted the raids and made the arrests on Thursday.
In mid-2017 the Slovenian police received a red alert from their Chinese counterparts, which led to the arrest of Wu Yuhui, a Taiwanese allegedly implicated in telephone scams.
The Chinese police asked for his extradition, but the request was rejected and the suspect was released soon after, the embassy says.
After that event, other Taiwanese criminals started arriving in Slovenia as a "safe haven" for telephone fraud, the release reads.
"Everyone apprehended in the operation is from Chinese Taiwan and has been involved in telephone fraud in which the damaged party is Chinese citizens."
According to the Chinese police, at least two cases of reported fraud are related to the apprehended Taiwanese, with the damage incurred at 290,000 yuan (EUR 37,200) and 2.01m yuan (EUR 258,000).
"All the 36 criminal suspects arrested were involved in the telephone fraud," the Chinese Embassy said.
According to the embassy's information, all the suspects have Taiwanese passports, so they do not need visas to enter Slovenia.
"They all make money with fraud, so they can only be categorised as perpetrators or accessories, and certainly not as victims of human trafficking or illegal immigrants," says the embassy.
The Slovenian police are said to have violated the One-China policy by engaging two Taiwanese interpretors in their operation.
However, the Chinese Embassy says that there were no language difficulties because Chinese police officers had been invited to participate in the operation.
"During the house search a person from Taiwan even admitted that he wasn't an interpreter but a police officer from Taiwan."
The embassy says that One-China principle "is not just a phrase and must therefore be respected in all aspects and actions".
Urging Slovenia to hand over "all Taiwanese criminals", the embassy says that China does not want them to be released without punishment or extradited to Taiwan, "where they will be able to engage again in criminal activities".
